You won’t need anymore complex circuits & complex software to sample commands from your remote control and to replicate them; all you need is just two standard IR led, which you can afford for about 0.50 $ each, or maybe you can extract from a couple of old remotes.

This method was tested with a VIA AC’97 audio card; please report if you have any success with different cards.

What you need:

– 1 spare headphone cable (0$ if you already have it, 10$ if you need a new one)

– 2 IR led (0$ if you have a couple of old remote controls, 1$ if you need to buy them)

c – Press PLAY in Audacity: your device should react to the command you previously sampled.

NOTES:

1 – For unknown reason, playing the resulting signal in Audacity works fine to control my device; but if I save the signal into a WAV file and reload it in Audacity, playing it results in… nothing! Any explanation for this?!? FIXED: it was due to wrong carrier frequency of rebuilt signal, which must be HALF of the needed carrier frequency! (19 KHz for 38 KHz, 18 KHz for 36 KHz…)

2 – You can’t save the signal in OGG or MP3 format, because this format distort the original signal

Please report results of your experiments! Good or bad, please just report and share! 😉

Sure you can use the WAV files on your IPOD: my idea actually started from a similar project… to turn IPOD into remote!
But please tell me if yout Ipod accepts these files, or if they must be in a different format.
(number of channels, sample rate, bits per sample, bytes per sample).

S5vi, thanks for your feedback.
Point 1) is a known issue, that’s way I updated my RAW2LIRC program in such a way it can “flip” the signal if required. Anyway, you can invert the sampling led to avoid this.
Point 2) is quite strange; I have a VIA AC’97 …

About patents: I knew using IR to play sounds was patented, not that recording IR through audio was too; anyway, anybody can use any patented technology as long as he does not sell it. That’s why patents are freely available online:http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6931231.html

I should have added to credits, indeed…
I will, together with your link.

Does any of this, like the wavelength, or forward current, matter?
Will this mean that the range of the built remote will be affected?

fyi, my ‘big idea’ is to write a universal remote program to run on my kohjinsha UMPC, where you can associate buttons with sound files, and opensource it so I can:
1) Replace the 5 remotes I have
2) Add support into the mediacentre i’ve written

Hey,
Nope no spare remotes…
If anything, I keep on losing remotes, which is why a computer based remote is a good idea 🙂 (I hopefully won’t lose my PC any time soon!)

I’ll give it a try with the ebay bought LED’s (if anything I’ll only lose £1)

Cheers!

p.s. the instructions have been very useful: i read the ‘How-To Turn your iPod in to a Universal Infrared Remote Control’ on engadget, then was looking to buy the Griffin IR device, which looks like isn’t manufactured any more.
This article has made it possible!

i’ve try this, and its working fine.
i tried few more condition, with one or two LED and not used the ground cable, its still can working fine.

the question is how to export WAV audio file for playing in my PSP.
the AUDIO format only working in sample bit rate 96000Hz, thats can’t be save as MP3.
WAV with 96000hz bitrate can played on windows media player, but can’t recognize on my PSP

MP£ wouldn’t work anyway, as it is a lossy compressione method which cuts just the needed frequency!
you should figure out if any WAV player is available for PSP, as WAV is the only uncompressed audio format, as far as I know; any compressd format wouldn’t do the trick.
THese FAQ appear to suggest that PSP does suport WAV format:http://psp-download-center.com/faq.php

i tried it to turn the TV ON/OFF, followed every step in your guide.
i used audacity.
recording was successful
converted “by hand” according to your instructions
when i play it (from the computer) using the emitter (2 leds with polarity reversed to one another), it does show the LED’s blinking bright in my camera, but when i bring it infront of the TV and play it does not turn on/off the tv…… i put it 1 meter away, and then closer and closer and closer to 5 Centimeters away, just didnt want to work.

i looked on 2 bursts consecutive burst sequences, and they looked the same so i converted only one of the bursts sequance.

i tried using a Sin wave, and a Square wave, just didnt work…

what am i doing wrong?
Can i show you my Audacity project files (that has all the recording and the conversion) ? if so where can i post it ?

please just send me your wav files (both original and hand-made), not the audacity project (it’s too large).
I guess you inverted the input led, anyway I have to take a look to your sampled signal.
please send to jumpjack at libero dot it .

[…] It’s actually a “sound wave to infrared signal converter“. Before using it to control the NEX-5, you’ll have to “record” the IR signal and convert it into a sound wave. For more information about the IR recording process, please read this blog: “World’s cheapest remote control replicator: just 1$ !’ by jumpjack“. […]

Thx for this tutorial, it works after some problem solved. I used the program of jumpjack for reconstitution of the IR signal
1. record with audacity
2. use RAWtoLIRC
3. use LIRCtoledrem
4. start comand

And when i play the IR signal on my pc it works with windows player but not with winamp 😮
Anyway gj guys ant thanks ^^

HI, i know it must be a old topic but, i tried your tutoriel, but i could’nt make it work. I was able to get the signal, and modified it to get the original signal on Audacity. But when i try to play the result wav track, nothing happen. Please can you give me some advice on it?

Hi, I managed to record the waveform and convert it by the ir-converter utility. Now, I need to re-use it in order to control an air conditioner, by using an Arduino card.
Now, how can I convert the .wav to a string/hexadecimal sequence to send to the conditioner?
thank you
Antonio

Then, this function converts data into “graphic binary” format to draw it on screen:

For i = 1 To DataSize/2
binary(i) = 0
If RawData(i) > Max/10 then ' Max - (Max * tolerance / 100) Then
binary(i) = One
End If
Next

Then you must write an Arduino sketch which plays a 38KHz tone while binary(i) is=1 and plays nothing when binary(i)=0.

How many milliseconds an element of the array lasts can be calculated from WavFreq value (samples/second): each element of the rawdata() array contains a 2-bytes value read from WAV file, i.e. a 16bit sample, and it must be “played” for 1/WavFreq seconds

Hi Jack!
Greetings. I recently bumped into your blog while searching for diy IR blaster tutorials and I must say, you got a great website 🙂 I have built both the transmitter and the transmitter+receiver combo by following some tutorials around the web and I was able to capture the IR signal through the receiver connected to the microphone jack. For sampling purposes, I used audacity. But the problem is, as per your statement, I am getting square waves but with some sine waves too! I read elsewhere that if I am getting anything other than square waves, there must be a problem with the hardware setup. Since the sampled signal didn’t work on the IR device, I am a bit worried. I have attached photos and screenshots for you to take a look. I know it’s been years since this post was made, but could you please take a look at my issue. Thanks 🙂

For transmitter,
Connected LED1 anode to LED2 cathode and vice versa

For transmitter cum receiver
Connected anodes of both the LEDs to the ground and the two anodes to left and right channel.

Your sample is very weird; I thank it looks “squared” just because it is saturated, which means your receiver is too sensitive or too close to source. It also lacks the initial “calibration signal”,which should be high for 10-20 times the typical duration of a “high” or “low” segment. Also, the final progressive attenuation of the signal is something I’ve never seen before in such samples…

Eventually, I never heard of an IR transmitter+receiver in one single device, where did you find this schematic?!?

Actually I think you have an issue in the RECEIVER: you must use just one single LED for sampling your remote:

Honestly, I expected a day or two to get a response, but wow! Thanks for the super fast response. II used the tutorial found on this webpage (https://wiki.samygo.tv/index.php5/Build_your_own_IR_transmitter) to build the receiver earlier. What I claimed to be transmitter cum receiver is apparently known as transceiver. The audacity screenshot I posted earlier was actually the result of recording IR using the transceiver I had built. I did see your post here (https://jumpjack.wordpress.com/2008/05/22/remote-control-2/) but continued with my previously built transceiver as it was supposed to send and receive IR signals. Or at least that’s what I thought! But today, as per your suggestion, I built a receiver with single LED (cathode connected to ground and anode to the other terminal of the jack). But when I try to record the IR signal after plugging the jack, nothing is getting recorded (except for the surrounding noise). My assumption is that the receiver is not being recognized by the computer and the built in microphone is getting selected when using audacity. I am out of ideas right now. Could you please suggest a way to get around this hiccup? I have posted another image with the newly assembled receiver. Thanks.

Does the input port work with a real microphone?
Once you get the microphone input properly recorded, just swap the microphone with the IR receiver and see what happens.
And don’t forget to record in stereo: the receiver records only on ONE channel!

Your suggestion was absolutely spot on! The problem was with the port. My laptop has the combo port and after looking here (https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1001623) I understood that I needed a 4 conductor jack. But luckily, I had one of these lying around the house (). So, I plugged in the single LED IR receiver to the microphone port and now, it can capture the IR signal. But still, the waves are not in square shape and there are waves in both the channels. Could this be an indicator of an improperly built receiver or other such factors? If so, could you kindly suggest a way around this issue?

Ok, you’re almost there.
You just need to swap the wires of the LED.
You could already use the sample you got to rebuild your signal, but doing what I said above will get you into the standard situation described in my posts, so it will be easier.

Probably your PC recognized that a single “device” is wired to the jack, so it “splitted” the signal to the two channels, anyway we don’t care, we just need one channel.
Now zoom out horizontally but zoom in vertically, so that the vertical signal -1/+1 fills the screen and that multiple “bursts” are visible at the same time on the screen. You’l see something like this, but flipped vertically:

Your signal is not in square shape because at your zoom level you actually see the signal carrier at 38000Hz: when the carrier is on, the signal is interpreted as “1”, when it is off the signal is interpreted as “0”.
In your signal I see “1” from 8.5003 to 8.5047, then “0” from 8.5047 to 8.5093, then “1” from 8.5093 to 8.5100, and so on…